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NFL Moving Draft to May Next Year

Goodell: Keeping draft in April would require looking for other venues

Posted by Josh Alper on May 21, 2013, 5:32 PM EDTAP
At a press conference to wrap up the league meetings in Boston, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said that the league saw “no choice” but moving next year’s draft to May because of a conflict with Radio City Music Hall.

Goodell said that a choice would be made soon about whether to hold the draft from May 8-10 or May 15-17 in New York. The change has been forced by a conflict with another event at the venue and Goodell said that there’s been no determination about when the event would be held beyond 2014. Because the conflicts with the spring event at Radio City will recur, the Commissioner also said that the draft could move if the decision was made to move things back to April in future years.

“Beyond that, if we want to move the draft back into April, we’ll have to look at other alternatives,” Goodell said.

Goodell also said that other proposed changes to the offseason schedule, including moving the start of the league year ahead of the combine were still being discussed with the NFLPA. Goodell said that he believed that such alterations would be a “good change for fans and for football” and that the league would continue working toward an agreement on a new calendar for February, March, April and May.

Selfishly, I'm quite pleased. The draft always seems to fall on my birthday, and while I'm fortunate to have family and friends that want to spend time on me, I'd prefer to stay at home like a recluse during the draft. Now, I'll be able to do that.

Goodell can't tell the truth to save his life. This has nothing to do with Radio City Music Hall. He's acting as if there isn't a single venue in all of NYC. Madison Garden would love to have it. Move it to the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Or strong arm RCMH - I guarantee the NFL has the power and clout to get any place they want, any time they want. A quick threat to move the whole draft to a new city and the Mayor of NYC and possibly NY Governor step in and make it happen. This is just another money grab to have NFL events every month of the year. An already insanely over-hyped process now has an extra month to drag on. Sucks.